Synopses & Reviews
"Produced by religious intolerance, political fanaticism, or social resentment, denunciation is a modern democratic practice too long neglected by historians. This fascinating book, written by excellent specialists, establishes a first inventory of this practice, leading the reader through the revolutionary and counter-revolutionary cultures of the last two centuries."—Francois Furet
"This is a fascinating and highly original exploration of a familiar, though poorly understood, phenomenon of modern societies in general and totalitarian systems in particular. From the French Revolution to the NKVD, Gestapo, and Stasi, denunciation is analyzed both as a function of political surveillance and as deeply rooted in the social practices of community and the workplace. The book represents a refreshing amalgam of deeply archival research and theoretical rigor."—Norman M. Naimark, Stanford University
Table of Contents
Introduction to the Practices of Denunciation in Modern European History
Sheila Fitzpatrick, Robert Gellately.
The Theory and Practice of Denunciation in the French Revolution
Colin Lucas
A Culture of Denunciation: Peasant Labor Migration and Religious Anathematization in Rural Russia, 1860-1905
Jeffrey Burds
Denunciation as a Tool of Ecclesiastical Control: The Case of Roman Catholic Modernism
Gary Lease
Signals from Below: Soviet Letters of Denunciation of the 1930s
Sheila Fitzpatrick
Denunciation and Its Functions in Soviet Governance: A Study of Denunciations and Their Bureaucratic Handling from Soviet Police Archives, 1944-1953
Vladimir A. Kozlov
The Uses of Volksgemeinschaft: Letters to the NSDAP Kreisleitung Eisenach, 1939-1940
John Connelly
Denunciations in Twentieth-Century Germany: Aspects of Self-Policing in the Third Reich and the German Democratic Republic
Robert Gellately
Index
Contributors